IAP - HIgh-Energy Universe Group Seminar (A. Corstanje -- on the way from LOFAR to SKA) (7/15)

Wednesday Jun 4, 2025, 11:00 AM → 1:00 PM Europe/Berlin

Room 206 (KIT CN Bld 425)

Semester SS 2025

Arthur Corstanje

VU Brussels, RU Nijmegen

"Cosmic ray measurements at dense radio arrays: on the way from LOFAR to SKA"

Chair: Tim Huege

 

abstract:

Radio measurements at LOFAR have demonstrated high-precision results on energy and shower maximum of cosmic rays. Now, with the SKA-Low radio telescope currently being built in Australia, the opportunity arises to detect cosmic rays with an antenna array that is over an order of magnitude more dense. It has nearly 60,000 antennas in a circle with 1 km diameter.

In this talk I will revisit the main methods used at LOFAR to obtain the measurements of the shower maximum and the corresponding mass composition estimate. After discussing the simulation challenge posed by having so many antennas, and a practical way around it, I will show recent results of applying the same LOFAR-style techniques to a detailed simulation study for SKA. This serves as a baseline for the performance of SKA; new analysis techniques are being developed that aim to fully exploit the wealth of data from SKA antennas.